Doctor-owned Hospitals Worried Reform Will Cripple Them

For now, Johnson says, the 25-year-old facility has no plans to expand. "But in the long run, what these bills would do is take out a physician's ability to compete and allows [mainstream] hospitals to behave like the monopolists they have been in many communities for a long time," Johnson says.

Like many doctor-owned surgical centers, Stanislaus was launched by doctors who weren't happy with leadership in the facilities where they had staff privileges, he says.

"They wanted to control their own surgical experience, to choose the staff that assists them, the tools they use, and the facilities in which they practice. Philosophically, we don't like monopolist [hospitals] that are arrogant and unresponsive."

Johnson says many of the 175-doctors now practicing at Stanislaus just got "tired of hospital executives saying 'I don't need to listen to you about needing new equipment. I don't care about remodeling the operating room or buying new instrumentation. And if you can't get your cases done until 10 p.m., I don't care."

Having centers that allow surgeons to work independently has also been a recruitment draw for an area that has an acute physician shortage, Johnson says.